Solar Systems (Astronomy Plate IV)

The labels for Figures 43, 44, 45 claim that they “représentent les systêmes de Ptolomée, de Copernic & de Tycho.” One diagram represents the Ptolemaic, earth-centered (geocentric) system. Another is Tycho Brahe’s system, which is a kind of intermediary or hybrid system in which the sun goes around the earth, but the planets go around the sun. Finally, there is the full-fledged sun-centered (heliocentric) system that Copernicus introduced in his De Revolutionibus. The Enlightenment period, of which the Encyclopédie is a major text, followed in the wake of the disruption of the Ptolemaic cosmology.